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Comment by nxzero | Hacker News Reader

Danger of your argument is that the majority of users expect privacy and that their systems are secure.

My experience is that the average person today assumes their devices are not secure and any information they have is accessible to the government without warrants.

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Same argument could be made about my house or my mail. I can only really expect privacy in both cases from the good actors in society, the people that respect a locked door, closed blinds, or the federal laws against opening my mail.

I guess I expect my privacy/security in most cases, but I'm aware of the realities and try to prepare for that privacy/security to be violated.

What matters for purposes of 4th amendment jurisprudence is whether or not someone's expectation of privacy is reasonable, not whether or not their expectation is fulfilled.

What constitutes probable cause for a search is relevant. The judge is arguing that all devices connected to the Internet are probably hacked and that as a result of the devices already being hacked, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Who said anything about probably cause?

Please clarify your question given probable cause is at the core of rights related to the forth.

The 4th amendment and surrounding case law deals with two distinct issues (actually, more than two, but two relevant here): that some searches require warrants and some do not, and that for those that do require warrants, probably cause must be shown in order for said warrants to be obtained. "Reasonable expectation of privacy" is the standard for deciding what is or is not a warrant-requiring search under the 4th amendment (see, e.g., Katz v. US). "Probable cause" is, given that something is a warrant-requiring search, the standard that needs to be met in order to get the warrant. The former is the one relevant to this discussion, not the latter.

Despite how many computers are hacked, I posit it's mathematically (factually) incorrect by a wide margin that the majority of Internet-connected devices are hacked.

That alone, if it is the force behind the judge's opinion/ruling, makes it invalid, right? Facts? Or do they have no place in a modern US courtroom?

Federal courts currently define probable cause to mean there is 51 percent likelihood that a crime was committed.

As such, it is safe to say 51% of home computers connected to the Internet have been hacked; again, hacked, not hackable.

If it's "safe to say", then there should be some statistical evidence backing this up, no?

At least in terms of viruses (the most common means of infiltrating a home computer), the percentage of households affected by any kind of computer virus is 40% according to http://www.statisticbrain.com/computer-virus-statistics/ (which in turn comes from data from Microsoft and Panda Security, among other places). This doesn't seem to define what "affected" means, however; it could mean that at least one computer was infected, or it could mean that they received a bit of spam from a non-household family member or friend whose computer was compromised.

I have windows in my house that are easily broken. I haven't put bars on them, I don't have an alarm system on them, and yet I know they're insecure.

No expectation of privacy for you, then.

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